Fandom: Batman
Pairing: Bruce Wayne & Male OC, Damian Wayne & Male OC [Platonic]
Rating: Teen
Content: Amnesia, Loss of Identity, Blood and Injury, Non-Verbal Character, Body Horror, Body Dysphoria
Date written: 6th July 2024
Summary: Bruce has a lot to think about after the fight with Killer Croc.
Author's notes: quite similar to the old fic's second chapter, but obvs going along with the new stuff from the first new chapter. as time goes on the chapters will get more and more different until they become completely different.

During one of Bruce's regular patrols, he overheard a bit of gossip between two of Penguin's thugs, of a shadowy being stalking Gotham's streets.

He dismissed it. They were clearly talking about him.

The next night, he heard more rumours. The shadowy being had white glowing eyes that shifted on the creature's head, and dark tendrils flowing along its back, and large, triangular ears.

He dismissed it again. It was just an exaggeration of the whited-out eyes of his cowl, and the pointed ends of his cape. He allowed himself a small smirk at the exaggeration, before moving on to the case he was trying to solve.

3 nights later, he heard another whisper about the shadowy being. It had four legs instead of two. It had a long, smokey tail. It walked along the ground like some type of mammal.

Odd. He wrote down a small note about it in his journal when he got back to the cave. He hoped it was just people's imaginations running wild.

2 weeks later, he heard even more rumours. The creature was larger than any human. One man had seen it walk straight past a parked car on the sidewalk, and had noted just how similar in size the creature had been to the vehicle. It had long claws on all four feet. It had a long muzzle, but of what animal it resembled, no one was certain of.

Bruce was concerned now. The "creature" didn't resemble Batman anymore. This was something else.

He wrote down everything he knew, and tried not to let the migraine that was starting to creep towards his temples settle in.

3 weeks later, and the creature that had been crawling around Gotham's streets finally had a name, and its name wasn't Batman.

They were calling it an omen. A bad one. The first horrible creature to arrive in Gotham had been The Batman, then it was The Joker, then it was Two Face and Harley Quinn, and all the other Rogues of Gotham followed suit after them. And now...this...thing. The Gothamites that knew about it thought of it as an omen for the horrors to come; The city continued to spew forth more horrible creatures of the night like there was an unlocked door to hell hidden somewhere, and it seemed as though there was no end in sight.

Bruce wasn't particularly superstitious, but he understood where those feelings were coming from. It unnerved him, too.

It seemed as though this "omen" had been identified as some sort of "shadow wolf". Given the previous descriptions that Bruce had been able to obtain, it all seemed to add up. This Omen was similar in some ways to Batman, but very different in others.

No pictures had been taken of the creature yet, but Bruce was sure they'd pop up sooner or later, if he didn't manage to catch a glimpse of it for himself.

He hoped against all hope that this mysterious creature wouldn't hurt anyone.

Despite all of his searching, and Oracle's own surveillance of Gotham, there was very little to be found of this so-called "Omen."

It bothered him greatly that he couldn't figure it out. That he couldn't find anything other than just rumours. He would've thought that at this point, if someone hadn't taken a photo of Omen and uploaded it to the internet, that at the very least it would've shown up on security cameras. But there was nothing to be found.

He wondered if perhaps the people of Gotham were, in fact, just seeing things. But the fact that enough people of all walks of life had apparently seen the creature made him question that train of thought.

There was clearly something going on, and if Batman wanted answers, he'd have to go out onto the streets of Gotham himself and find them.

It all came to a head a month later, however, when he and Robin were chasing down a freshly escaped Killer Croc.

Croc had breached containment within Arkham, supposedly helped by a few other rogues that had been planning to bust out of Arkham for months. Others had escaped during the initial breakout, of course, and Batman would have to find them eventually, but at the time of the breakout, the most important people to go after were the most dangerous. And that had been Killer Croc.

He'd told Robin not to get involved. Croc was dangerous, powerful, and towered over regular adults, let alone children.

Damian wasn't the type to listen to orders, though (and Bruce was sure the kid was going to give him ten times more grey hairs than any of his other Robins had), and had jumped into the fray anyway.

None of it had gone well. Bruce had been waiting for backup to arrive, when Damian went after Killer Croc. Neither of them had been prepared for the absolute beating that Croc was giving out. Bruce had managed to get Damian out of the way for the most part, but he'd taken a huge blow to the chest as a result; thrown metres away from a single swipe of Croc's arm against his chest. When Nightwing eventually showed up, it had been too little, too late. There'd been little time to prepare an attack or wait for backup, and they had all paid the price for it.

Bruce tried not to remember how it felt when he helplessly watched as Killer Croc raised Damian in his clawed hand by the front of his suit, opening his jaws wide. He'd truly thought he was about to see Croc bite and kill his son.

But something had save him. Right before Croc bit down on his son's flesh, a shadowy creature had jumped down from the rooftops. For a split second, Bruce thought that it might've been Cass, but he quickly realised that it couldn't be, it was too large.

He hadn't been able to properly see what the thing even was until after the bloody battle. And how bloody the battle had been; The black and shadowy creature had fought tooth and nail with Croc, not showing an ounce of remorse as it ripped and tore through hard scaly skin. Croc had been fighting for his life.

When all was said and done, both individuals left the fight with major wounds that would need serious medical attention. Croc had been thrown so hard against one of the buildings that it had immediately knocked him out- a relief to Batman, but also something that made the alarm bells in his mind start to ring at the prospect of this creature being so powerful.

It was only when the fight was actually over that he'd gotten a decent look at the creature. It was a black wolf with glowing white eyes, not too dissimilar to the ones in his cowl. The wolf had been incredibly large for a canine. Bruce suspected his own eyes would reach to about the height of the wolf's back. Even stranger than its size and glowing eyes, was its almost...fluid form. The shadows seemed to move around it, tendrils of darkness making up its fur and tail. It was closer to what Bruce thought demons might actually look like, if he believed them to be real.

But Bruce didn't believe in demons. It was more likely to be a meta of some kind, a person rather than an animal.

He'd been wrong before, though.

Bruce had watched in extreme concern, while he'd been busy getting himself up off the ground, as Damian approached the shadow-wolf in question. He'd not heard what his son had said, but he'd seen the nod the creature gave in response, and then watched as it limped away, trailing a black, goo-like substance from its leg.

He'd chased after it, limping himself as he turned the corner into the same alleyway he'd watched it walk into, and stopped at the sight of...nothing. There'd been a bit of the strange black goo trailing into the alleyway from when the wolf walked in...but the goo stopped there. There was nothing of the black blood going left, right, up, down, forwards or backwards. It was as if the wolf had simply...disappeared.

Bruce hadn't liked it one bit.

Ever since that particular fight against Killer Croc, Bruce had been searching.

He now knew that Omen was a real being. Both himself and Robin had seen it with their own eyes. He knew what it looked like and he knew that it was strong enough to lift Killer Croc up into the air and throw him hard enough to knock him out. It clearly also had a strong bite-force, too, based on the broken bones that Killer Croc had sustained during the fight, which coincided with the bite marks on those same broken limbs.

He was uncertain of the creature's origin, however. The creature had bled, which clearly showed that it was mortal, but its blood wasn't anything from any animal or being that lived on Earth. Its blood had been black, thick and it almost looked like it had smoke coming off of it, as though it was burning or hot to the touch. It looked like the same strange black tendrils that had been on the creature's back, moving with the current of the wind.

Bruce had been hesitant to touch the strange "blood", even with gloves on. The instrument he used to gently prod at the goo revealed to him that the tendrils did seem to have... something going on with them. The movements weren't entirely random. They did move with the wind, certainly, but they also could move independently of the wind, as well. When he'd let the thin metal rod touch the goo, the tendrils had reached out and grabbed onto the instrument. It had taken a significant amount of force to pull it away, and even still, the instrument retained some of the black goo on it, contaminating it permanently.

He was left with more questions than answers, and he'd need to do significantly more research and experimenting on this strange "blood" that had come from Omen if he wanted to learn more.

The strangest thing to Bruce about the whole situation, though, was that Omen hadn't been seen since the fight with Killer Croc. No one had seen it. Any rumours of its existence were all old stories he'd heard before, and Bruce was starting to suspect that the creature had succumbed to its wounds after the battle. Either that, or it was waiting. For what, Bruce had no idea.

There was also the fact that it was likely that this creature was sentient, and understood English. Damian had told him that he'd thanked the creature for helping him (and while Bruce was glad the boy was developing some manners, he was still incredibly wary of the shadow-wolf), and in response the creature had nodded its head. Bruce had seen the nod for himself, but hadn't been sure if what he was seeing was true or accurate, given his injured state at the time. Damian had confirmed it for him, and all it did was give Bruce even more questions.

He wasn't sure if he should hope that Omen was dead or not. On one hand, it had saved his son's life and made it significantly easier to bring Killer Croc back into custody.

On the other hand, however...he knew nearly nothing about Omen. He didn't know it's intentions, where it had come from, if it was even from Earth, what it was doing in Gotham, or why it had decided to live in Gotham. Every single alarm bell in his brain was ringing, and ringing loudly.

All he could do at that point, was wait.